Frank Ocean Recorded New Album at Abbey Road With Rick Rubin

Frank Ocean Recorded New Album at Abbey Road With Rick Rubin

Singer worked on LP in U.K. studio made famous by the Beatles.

Published May 26, 2015

Frank Ocean recorded music for his new album with Rick Rubin at Abbey Road, the U.K. studio made famous by the Beatles. French pianist Christophe Chassol, who worked with Ocean on the upcoming sophomore LP, disclosed some details about the collaboration to Gilles Peterson of the BBC.

"Ocean invited me to Abbey Road to record on his album,” explained Chassol.”I asked him how he heard about me. He told me his friend Diplo was listening a lot to [my album] Indiamore, and they started to listen to it, and they were wondering how I was doing the speech harmonization, so he called me. He asked me to do some speech harmonization on a song with him.”

From what he describes, the recording experience left an impression. “We start to work on a track and he says, 'This track is this' -- that car that you can see," he told Peterson. "He makes me work on a song, and I'm like, 'Oh this sounds like Pino Donaggio's score for Blow Out by Brian De Palma'. I start to work on a song and five minutes later on the Pro Tools screen you have the movie, the score, stretched to fit the song -- just to try. I’ve never worked with that much money in music. It's good sometimes to have money, because you can try things."

Very little is know about Ocean's new album beyond being tentatively scheduled for July, but no one stick to drop dates anymore. Early releases are the new wave.